Michael Rockefeller

New Guinea Photographs, 1961

November 15, 2006–February 2007

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology presents the first, solo show of the photographs of the late Michael Rockefeller taken in 1961 in the highlands of New Guinea. This selection of black-and-white photographs has been chosen from the 117 rolls of black-and-white film (approximately 3,500 images) taken while Rockefeller was a member of the Peabody Museum's New Guinea Expedition (1961–1963).

The photographs document the life of the Dani people dwelling in the Baliem Valley, high in the mountains of New Guinea, today Irian Jaya, Indonesia. In addition to their rich documentary content, these photographs reveal much about the sensibility behind the camera. Many of the photographs in the exhibition are vintage prints made in the early 1960s. A few of the photographs were published in the volume about the expedition Gardens of War (Random House, 1968). Most have never before been published or publicly displayed.